There has been a lot of speculation in the automotive industry about what the major groups are going to do with respect to production plans. We have seen both Ford and General Motors pull back from assembling passenger cars in the US in favour of higher profit margins on trucks and SUVs. There have also been reports about Toyota doing a similar thing where they have started to … [Read more...]
Tom Tjaarda
Last year the world lost one of the most prolific car designers, Tom Tjaarda. Tjaarda was born in Detroit in 1934 - his father worked in the Lincoln division of Ford and his claim to fame was that he worked on the Lincoln-Zephyr cars from the late 1930s. He had designed a vehicle that Ford used as a basis for their Zephyr. The Tjaarda surname came from a Dutch background with … [Read more...]
Iso Rivolta
This week in our history article I will describe a company that started out making a non-motoring product, was acquired and revamped into a car manufacturer and after it failed, its descendant became a successful property group. Iso Rivolta started out as Isothermos and developed refrigerators and equipment for railways. In 1948, Renzo Rivolta bought the company to move into … [Read more...]
Italdesign: Low Volume Cars
Italdesign is another Italian coach-builder or design house to move into limited edition supercars. Pininfarina have also said that they were moving down this path and shows that the world still has lots of discretionary spending dollars available on ultra-luxury toys! Italdesign though, beat their Italian rival by at least 12 months to the market. Italdesign started in 1968 … [Read more...]
The Laforza SUV
The late designer, Tom Tjaarda designed an SUV called the Laforza or the Rayton Fissore Magnum V8. The background of the vehicles is quite interesting and is another European design with a US sourced drivetrain. Carrozzeria Fissore was a coach-builder based in Turin, northern Italy and were founded in 1919 to make horse drawn carts and it was in the 1930s that they started … [Read more...]
